The present study with an international perspective, investigated the state of knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes among young students toward bioenergy in Finland, Slovakia, Taiwan, and Turkey. A total of 1,903 students with an average age of 15 years from 19 rural and urban schools participated in this study. The study found statistically significant differences in students' bioenergy knowledge with respect to the countries. Only a small percentage of the students in each country were able to demonstrate a high level of bioenergy knowledge. In overall, the gender and rural-urban differences did not play a significant role in determining students' level of bioenergy knowledge. The students appeared to be very critical of bioenergy and especially of the issues related to bioenergy production from forests. They demonstrated positive attitudes in terms of their willingness to learn about bioenergy and its use in their daily life. The study found statistically significant effects of gender and locality on students' perceptions of bioenergy. Most knowledgeable students in bioenergy appeared to be most critical in their perceptions and attitudes toward bioenergy. The principal component analysis revealed three distinct dimensions of students' perceptions and attitudes toward bioenergy viz., "motivation", "critical", and "practical". A broader societal support is needed for the introduction of bioenergy in many countries and young generation's positive attitudes to this matter is certainly important for people who will create policies in this area. More efforts are needed to support young students so that they understand the multi-dimensional issues related to bioenergy by allowing them to have practical experiences with bioenergy.
This paper presents findings from an on-going international study (Australia and Finland) of preschool teachers' beliefs and pedagogical practices in the integration of technology to engage young children in learning science. Scarcely used in early childhood education research, this study is framed using Mishra and Koehler's (2006) Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) theory. Case studies presented in this paper are undertaken with data collected from three preschools in Australia. Participant observation of teachers' (N = 7) and children's play experiences, and semi-structured interviews, revealed that teachers occasionally used iPads and some apps within their intentionally constructed science investigations, both for teacher-initiated research and for communicating with parents via children's journals. Teachers were not adverse to, but rather accepting of embedding technology as a pedagogical affordance and keen on planning for multimodal science-based experiences. The findings of this study imply the need for a pedagogical shift, wherein teachers' technological pedagogical knowledge improves in how and when to sensibly integrate technology for children's engagement in scientific inquiry, rather than relying on hands-on experiences alone. Implications lie in more closely aligning teachers' TPK and related practices with science content knowledge by co-researching together with children and foregrounding both teachers' and children's perspectives.
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